Iran-based hack­ers in­dicted for cy­ber­at­tack

WASH­ING­TON — A US grand jury in­dicted two Ira­nian na­tion­als over claims they car­ried out a March ran­somware at­tack against the city of At­lanta. Fara­marz Shahi Sa­vandi and Mo­hammed Me­hdi Shah Mansouri used ran­somware known as SamSam to in­fect about 3,789 servers and work­sta­tions in At­lanta, the Jus­tice de­part­ment said Wed­nes­day. The cy­ber­at­tack took place last March 10-22. Dur­ing the as­sault, the hack­ers en­crypted “vi­tal city com­puter sys­tems” and de­manded ran­som, paid in Bit­coin, to re­store ac­cess to the files, ac­cord­ing to the re­lease. The two men, who op­er­ated from Iran, were also in­dicted last week by a fed­eral grand jury in Ne­wark, New Jer­sey, for a “34-month-long in­ter­na­tional com­puter hack­ing and ex­tor­tion scheme,” the de­part­ment said. —